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Ghadaffi dies of propaganda overdose

I have been debating with a friend over the issue of why Ghadaffi has been treated worse than other leaders of the same region. After all, what Muslim leader has not shown unusual cruelty in the course of his reign?

One thing that my friend brought up was that Ghadaffi had instituted Sharia law.

The problem is that, while Ghadaffi did in fact make a stab at using Sharia as a reference, or sort of Constitution, he soon found that it didn’t work in the real world, and he very shortly abandoned it (see link below).

On the other hand, Obama bowed obsequiously before King Abdullah during a visit not long ago but yet Saudi Arabia has one of the most inhumane treatments of prisoners of any country in the world – thanks to its reliance on Sharia law. So here you have Ghaddafi, who abolished cruel Sharia, vs. Abdullah, whose regime relies on Sharia, and whom do the Western elites (incl notably, Obama) call cruel?

Why, Ghadaffi, of course. (Not saying he wasn’t, but why single him out if other Middle East regimes are arguably more cruel?).

Then my friend, who avidly reads the MSM, said he had read that Ghadaffi had brought poverty to his nation. So I did some internet searches on Libyan poverty and found that the only articles claiming Libyans were poor had been written during the run-up to the Libyan rebellion, by reporters in countries whose leading politicians supported the ouster of Ghadaffi. Does anyone doubt that much of what the MSM reports, and the way they report it, is largely propaganda supportive of government policy, particularly that of increasingly authoritarian governments in Europe and the US?

On the other hand, I discovered that, in 2009, the year with the most complete reporting for all countries in the region, the average per capita income in Libya was several times that in neighboring countries, namely, $9,957 (up to $13,800 this year).

Here are some reference figures for average incomes in other countries that same year:

Afghanistan: $4,526

Iraq: $2,565

Kosovo: $3,080

Morocco: $2,808

Egypt: $2,699

Tunisia: $4,199

Now, you will note that Iraqis, who had been under US control since 2003, or about 5 years at the time of that compilation, had an average annual per capita income of only a third that of Libya, while Afghanis, who have been under Western Coalition control since 2001, or about 7 years at that time, earned less than half the income of Libyans. Kosovo, which was also created by the Western powers through war, had some of the lowest income in all of Europe, about one-third of what Libyans earned.

So it doesn’t look as though poverty is a viable argument against Ghadaffi, even though it was a favorite in the MSM in the run-up to his murder. After all, if impoverishment of one’s people is grounds for murdering a leader, then what should we do with the leaders (notably Western ones) responsible for countries poorer than Libya?

But when I articulated these arguments, my friend then said he thought it was more of an issue of wealth distribution, with Ghadaffi receiving vastly more than his share. However, the UN’s calculation of the Gini index, which is the best indicator of wealth distribution, was not collected for the countries that I wanted to study for my analysis, namely, Libya, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

So if there are no official data available, then apparently Western anti-Ghadaffi arguments were based solely on speculation and anecdotal evidence. Yet, if you want to trade Libya anecdotes for Saudi Arabia anecdotes, for example, on the subject of wealth distribution you can swap stories ‘til you drop. Here’s a tofer for you, evidence of both human rights violations and poverty: A blogger was arrested this year in Saudi Arabia for posting evidence of poverty in that country. Not just a tad bit authoritarian? And not evidence that enough poverty exists that the government is scared word might get out.

You know what all this reminds me of?

A movie I once saw about a corrupt sheriff’s department in the south that stopped a car driven by a black northerner and tried to charge him but couldn’t think of a charge. They couldn’t get him for speeding because he wasn’t speeding. They couldn’t get him for drunk driving either because he was significantly more sober than a judge.

One of the deputies finally found a tail light out and they fined him on that flimsy charge.

That is the story of Libya’s Ghadaffi: a failed tail light and now he’s toast.

So what was the real motive behind the persecution and murder of Libya’s strong man, who had brought prosperity to his country and was apparently well enough liked that many of his countrymen laid down their lives for him?

The hypothesis that holds up best to scrutiny is that the Western power elite despises Western culture, especially the Judeo-Christian aspect, and here was an opportunity to rid the Middle East of another secular leader who tolerated Christians and Jews (he imported blacks from southern Africa as laborers and he cooperated with the West in its policies regarding Israel). After all, why else would the Ruling Class import millions and millions of Muslims to Europe knowing that they would not assimilate, that they would cause trouble, and that they oppose Christianity and its trappings? And why did every conflict with Western involvement – Iran, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ivory Coast, Egypt, etc. — ultimately wind up with almost all of the native Christians banished from their homeland of generally about 2000 years?

I have shown copious evidence of this anti-Judeo-Christian motive in numerous articles, and with each move that the West makes in the Middle East I become more and more convinced of it:

A January wage increase of 5 percent for government employees disappointed those Saudis who earn less than 10,000 riyals, or $2,666, a month, especially after other Gulf countries moved more quickly to raise wages by larger amounts.

A popular Saudi video blogger was detained this week, along with his crew, after his report on poverty in the kingdom’s capital, Riyadh, was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, human rights activists said.

The blogger, Feras Bugnah, was arrested on Sunday with his colleagues Hosam al-Deraiwish and Khaled al-Rasheed, in connection with the latest episode of their online show, “We Are Being Cheated,” according to the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association.